I wanted to write up another life update, but i'm still processing all the things and changes and emotions. All i can say for now is that i have a diagnosis and i'm working on some issues.
Today I wanted to talk about something i'll call "performative planning". But since this blog is pretty new i'm gonna give out some context.
Long story short: I like planners. Paper planners, specifically Hobonichi and ring-bound planners. I've tried a multitude of them and now i've been using a Hobonichi Weeks for almost a year (and the one for next year should be arriving soon). It took me a loooong time to find one planner that works for me, and i'm so happy i found one.
In general, planning is meant to be a tool and not a chore; I think that sums it up well enough. I ditched several planners in the past, both dated (the ones that come with pre-set dates for an entire year) and undated (the ones that don't come with dates so that you can use them whenever). I noticed that ring-bound planners were very versatile, but can easily become overwhelming. The hobonichi intimidated me at first, but now i've gotten very very comfortable with it. Everyone has different needs, so there's probably a planner out there for almost everyone.
I've been on this planner journey for several years now, and the way that i approach certain things, including planning itself, has changed.
Enter social media.
I've been following the planner community for those several years as well. Seeing trends come and go, companies rising and falling, people changing their entire planning systems, etc. Like most people who are passionate about a hobby, whatever it might be, I too wanted to be a part of it. Not to become famous, just to be there and interact with people who share an interest with me. Most of the planner community is either on Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube. Facebook i don't use, Youtube is too complicated for me, so i created an Instagram account dedicated to planner content.
What do you do when you join a community? You post content related to it. And in the planner community we post our planners. This is where the problem begins.
Going back to the beginning of this post: planning is meant to be a tool and not a chore. It should help you, not stress you out. I'm a perfectionist, so my planner has to be perfect and carefully curated to be posted on instagram. See what the problem is here?
Wanting to plan for social media makes planning impractical, cumbersome, stressful, and counterintuitive. I quickly found myself censoring what i put in my planner in order to appeal to other people, and so my planner stopped being useful for me. I became self conscious about things that shouldn't matter. Does this weekly spread look too plain? Colorful or neutrals? Is it too silly to write in my gaming goals for today? Will i lose followers if i post a different color scheme? etc etc.
Then there's the typical social media problems. To me its super stressful; i struggle interacting with my friends, how am i supposed to interact with a bunch of strangers on a daily basis? And i don't know why but seeing my post be a day old and only have 2 likes really brings me down. I know social media numbers are not important, but they do affect me and i know im not the only one that feels that way. I also don't feel like i fit in... anywhere to be honest lol but specially in social media. There's always gonna be small cliques and circles that i was too late to be a part of. Moving on before i start ranting about my social rejection issues...
I wanted to be a content creator for some reason, i still want to sometimes, but i know i'm probably not made for that. I struggle with people, i'm awkward, i can't keep up with my own schedule; i just need to work on a lot of things before I can make that happen. I have a youtube channel for planner content, but i really struggle with editing video and i don't have a good set up regarding both audio and video quality. Maybe if i ever get a microphone or something i can make it work, but even then i don't know. Now with my hobonichi order on its way i was thinking of how to make a haul video happen, but i don't want to, to be honest.
I decided instead of having a thousand niche accounts that i will never be able to keep up with, i'm just gonna have my twitter and deviantart for art, my instagram for whatever the hell i have going on there, and this blog for everything and anything i wanna talk about. For my Hobonichi order, i'm just gonna take a few pictures and write a small entry on here, and have some fun decorating it and just being me on the internet. I was about to start talking about decentralization but i think i'll leave that for a different day lmao
Ok, i don't know if any of this made any sense to you; i appologize if it didn't. Nevertheless, i'm gonna thank you for reading and wish you a very good day~
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